


garrus takes a rocket to the face, shepard takes it personally

by Euxiom



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Gen, and her and zaeed put up with A LOT, i didnt tag miri because she doesnt even have a speaking line but rest assured: i love her, regarding these two idiots, so does tali. poor tali.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-23
Updated: 2019-06-23
Packaged: 2020-05-16 07:28:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19313467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Euxiom/pseuds/Euxiom
Summary: you ever do something impulsive - and it turns out good - but your friends never let you live it down?yeah.this is that moment for jahlo.





	garrus takes a rocket to the face, shepard takes it personally

**Author's Note:**

> one of the first serious pieces of writing I did for Jahlo Shepard! :) it's years old, but I was feeling very nostalgic and wanted to toss it out into the world. did some editing, but it holds up!

Jahlo closed his eyes, pinched his tongue between his teeth, and counted to ten.

There was still a gunship outside. There was Garrus’s blood on the floor. There was the beat of mercenary bullets—trying to push their way into the room.

Jahlo could _feel_ his resolve to make it through the next ten minutes start to splinter. The anxiety that floated into his life on the wings of the slaver attack, the anxiety that never left, the anxiety that joined hands with the stresses of soldiering—at this point, Jahlo knew it was like staring into a vast, gaping maw.

He'd compare it to some kind of cosmic horror, but he had already killed one of those.

 _“_ One hell of a fight you yanked me into, Shepard,” Zaeed was on this side of the room, now, his gravely old voice cutting through the noise of Jahlo’s own thoughts and the battle both.

“It’s par for the course,” Jahlo managed to say, casually leaning around the wall buttress to send potshots at someone trying to flank Miranda’s position. Miranda, who, despite her stiff demeanor and Cerberus ties, was trying to stabilize Garrus.

If Jahlo had been _faster_ , if he hadn’t wasted so much energy—the biotic corridor had been _right there_ —if, if, if.

He would probably kill himself agonizing over the what-ifs of his life before any of Sovereign’s compatriots showed.

There was a sudden grating noise, like metal shearing apart— _like the silo coming down in two halves, the gutters on the house peeling back from the heat—_ and Zaeed cackled, lowering back into cover, the scope on his battered rifle moving into its dormant position.

“Softened it up for you, Shepard,” Zaeed said, and winked.

Jahlo compartmentalized his panic for the millionth time, combat instincts processing what Zaeed meant—one of the rotors was damaged, smoke billowing, and he could see the angry Batarian pilot through the cockpit glass.

He inhaled, twisted a mass effect field into a loose barrier, feeling out the path.

He glanced at Miranda, who was angrily shoving hair behind her ear, and smearing the stark blue of turian blood on her face in the process. She met his eyes, determination changing to confusion at his position—yeah, he could see how she got so far. Processed things fast, like he did.

The next moment Jahlo was twisting his own mass, spinning it like those old earth tales of magic, shooting across the room with as much momentum and force as one of the gunship’s own rockets.

The brief period where he was not quite free falling in the charged corridor of intersecting fields, he reined some threads in for a nova blast—and watched as the pilot's four eyed gaze turned from hate to disbelief.

It was a simple matter to shatter the plexiglass inwards, another simple matter to utilize the shrapnel and biotic momentum to kill the pilot.

Then there was the simple matter of his biotics dissipating, and Omega’s gravity reestablishing itself over him.

Jahlo managed to veer away from the gunship’s crash, but that was about all he managed—the dirty copper of Omega came up as swiftly as Jahlo had charged the gunship.

His armor took the brunt, the HUD blaring alarms at the mistreatment, his left side blaring _pain, pain, pain,_ and he took a breath, a real one, not a startled gasp from impact.

“Goddamn incredible,” Zaeed’s voice was nearby, but Jahlo didn’t feel like moving just then. “You might be a crazier motherfucker than I am, and that’s saying something,” the old merc continued, footsteps becoming louder.

Soon enough, he was helped up. “Tch, careful, think I busted my arm,” Jahlo muttered. He ignored the scuffed black and red plating, and the fleeting regret at the idea of having to repair it later.

Zaeed just laughed. “Think the Aussie’s got your turian stabilized,” he said.

Jahlo’s brain hung on _aussie_ , until he remembered Miranda’s faint accent. Then his thoughts skipped to pain, the blue blood, _stabilized._

_Stabilized, stabilized, stabilized._

Jahlo sighed heavily, whether from emotion or exhaustion, he couldn’t tell.

“You two must go way back, huh,” Zaeed remarked, still helping him hobble back inside the Archangel’s base.

“What makes you say that?”

“Oh, nothing, Shepard,” Zaeed gave him a look. “Other than the fact you fucking biotically charged a gunship for him.”

_Well._

It wasn’t a point Jahlo could argue, his shoulder testifying, so he didn't say a goddamn thing.

 

-~-

 

The post-drug-post-sleep haze clung to his brain, and it seemed an eternity before Jahlo could pull himself out of the mire.

The lights were low, and the SR-2’s Medbay was smaller. There was Chakwas’s organized clutter, things the STG retiree had already moved in, medical devices (presumably) that he couldn't begin to guess at the functions of.

It wasn’t the station labs he woke up in, he reminded himself. It was almost cozy.

Jahlo moved to sit up, and then his left shoulder, arm, and hip all simultaneously barraged him with pain signals, reminding him why he was here in the first place.

“Shepard, that you?” a distinctly turian voice croaked.

Jahlo _moved_ , shoving the covers off his bed, briefly glad he didn’t have any intravenous tubes hooked up. Garrus was sprawled out one bed over, looking miserable and put-upon, but somehow fine. Echoes of the same detective that followed him to Saren.

“It’s me,” he finally said, slowly making his way over, trying to be more mindful of his body after the sudden start. Funny, he assumed charging a gunship would have...hurt _more_. His brain tried reminding him of a conversation with Miranda; she had everything on Project Lazarus waiting should he want to peruse how they did it. Jahlo promptly shut that line of thought down. He was glad to sit, the adrenaline spike already leaving him woozy. Garrus looked different without his visor covering one eye, Jahlo realized. Then he noted the bandaging over the side of his face, and down his neck.

“You’re alive,” Jahlo said, his tone soft from exhaustion and surprise both.

“I think,” Garrus shifted a little, propped awkwardly on pillows to compensate for the distinctly unturian bed. “That’s my line.”

“There’s—a lot to talk about, but later,” Jahlo said, cutting himself off.

“Good idea. There’s the guy I know,” Garrus said, looking nothing like the formidable sniper Jahlo had seen earlier.

“Garrus, you bitched about most of my ideas,” Jahlo felt himself grinning even though his jaw ached.

“You were dead for two years, and turns out I had enough bad ideas of my own,” Garrus returned, deadpan.

“I. Yeah. S’what everyone keeps saying,” Jahlo stared at his hands, sobering and stilling all at once.

A beat of uncomfortable silence slid by, and Jahlo spent it wishing he was still unconscious. Whatever stuff Chakwas had administered actually _worked._

“I honestly thought I was hallucinating from the stims,” Garrus remarked.

“About the entire scenario?” Jahlo asked, looking up again.

“No. _You_.” Garrus stared at him, but the rest of his words softened it. “But then there was a salarian fluttering around, and then the almighty Karin Chakwas appeared to tell me how disappointed she was while she fixed me up.”

Jahlo couldn’t stop the laugh it startled out of him.

“So, as you can imagine, that helped solidify things as actual _reality_ ,” Garrus waved his hand out. “Still. What the hell happened, Shepard?”

Jahlo exhaled. It seemed even if he tried to crush it down, the universe would dredge it up—the usual luck, in other words—maybe he wasn’t all that different, all that gone, after all.

“Cerberus project. Titled Lazarus,” Jahlo began. “Reference to one of our religions and mythologies—Jesus, the man and the god in one, heals a man called Lazarus. Given that he is god, this healing is...reviving him, from death. From leprosy, which was a pretty bad disease.”

“Okay,” Garrus’s voice was tired, even, patient, clearly waiting for more.

“You saw me get spaced. Well. Figuratively,” Jahlo shut his eyes. “They...got me. Worked for two years with all kinds of cybernetics and tissue cloning. I guess what little time I spent asphyxiating didn’t cause too much cell death—at least in regard to my brain.”

“The Six Hundred Million Credit Man,” Garrus deadpanned.

“What the fuck?” Jahlo laughed, momentarily jerked out of having to contemplate death. “When I brought you in for Saren you didn’t know _half_ the crews’ references. Did you spend all this time brushing up?”

“On the side, while doling out vigilante justice and entering a depressive spiral, yeah,” Garrus somehow managed to shrug while propped awkwardly, and Jahlo was struck with the same feeling as earlier, right before his biotics flared—he’d have an abominable time trying to go on without Garrus Vakarian.

“I’ll have to pay you back the favor,” Jahlo said, making to reach out and squeeze Garrus’s hand—but the turian beat him to it, what with the longer limbs. It took a little reorganizing due to their different grips, but it worked.

“I’ve missed you, Shepard,” Garrus said, his voice still raspy from the injuries, the stress, the treatment, subvocals thrumming with more emotion that Jahlo didn't want to try guessing at just then.

“It doesn’t feel like two years have passed, honestly,” Jahlo said, tightening his grip. “But it’s been a terrible two months without you.”

“Of course it has, with no one covering your six like I do,” and even if Garrus didn’t have _anything_ like the same facial structure, Jahlo knew he was smirking.

“Guess what the first thing I bought with Cerberus credits was,” Jahlo said, leaning forward.

“A Claymore shotgun?” Garrus offered, flicking his mandibles.

“I bought an electric guitar I’ve been eying since I was twelve.”

Garrus laughed, and Jahlo felt like everything, somehow, might turn out all right.

**Author's Note:**

> "you CHARGED a GUNSHIP?"  
> \- everyone, forever, at jahlo  
> "what, like its hard?"  
> \- jahlo, who goes on to do even more batshit things now that he has higher power biotic amps
> 
> also, everyone who plays mass effect knows Garrus is your best friend, but if you're reading VIBES from this i want to tell you: that's entirely absolutely intended. 
> 
> title credit goes to @snowsheba


End file.
